Helena Prat

A de­signer and cre­ator of Hel­lenica Ce­ram­ics, He­lena has a small, charm­ing shop on car­rer de la Força in Girona, where her frag­ile work is on dis­play. It is pre­cisely the fragility of these ce­ramic pieces that con­ceal their beauty and power. The shop is an art space spe­cialised in artis­tic ce­ram­ics with an in­no­v­a­tive de­sign. It is full of pre­cious dec­o­ra­tive and util­i­tar­ian ob­jects made from high-tem­per­a­ture ce­ram­ics. He­lena also makes cus­tom pieces to order.

She works with clays (stoneware, heat-re­sis­tant, porce­lain, glass and ce­ramic glazes) and plays with geo­met­ric shapes and colour con­trasts. Her cre­ations are known all over the world. For He­lena, ce­ram­ics are art, life and his­tory. Her work is both the land and the sea. It is the land­scape of the Em­pordà and the Costa Brava. In stoneware and porce­lain we find the greens and the golds of wheat and bar­ley fields, the dif­fer­ent shades of blue, green and turquoise of our sea, and the browns and greys of the stone from the cliffs that bor­der our coast.

For some time now, El Celler de Can Roca has been using one of her cre­ations to pre­sent one of its star dishes. Other well-known Cata­lan restau­rants also use her cre­ations to serve their dishes, such as El Capritx in Ter­rassa (1 Miche­lin star), El Ll­e­vat­aps in Girona, Els Pescadors in Llançà, Spoonik and El Por­talón in Barcelona. He­lena also works on culi­nary pro­jects with the chefs Pep Noguer (who dis­sem­i­nates and pro­motes the qual­ity stamp Girona Excel·lent), and Marc Ribas of TV3 fame.

1 - Pan­els with stoneware tiles in­flu­enced by the Barcelona panot tile. Dif­fer­ent de­signs and geo­met­ric evo­lu­tions play with colour con­trasts.

2 - Blue stoneware plates and bowls re­flect­ing the turquoise and crys­talline wa­ters of Costa Brava coves. These are sim­i­lar to the ones cur­rently used by El Celler de Can Roca.

3 - Gold-coloured porce­lain bow­els in­spired by the wheat fields of the Em­pordà.

4 - The colour blue and all of its shades are pre­sent in many of the pieces.

5 - Porce­lain paste. Its power to trans­form the final pieces is sur­pris­ing, mag­i­cal and fas­ci­nat­ing.

6 - Tools. Al­though each and every one has its own func­tion, the most im­por­tant tool, the es­sen­tial thing with­out which He­lena can­not work are her hands.

7 - Small coloured porce­lain gems in­spired in or­ganic ir­reg­u­lar shapes.

8 - Pieces of black heat-re­sis­tant stoneware.

9 - A piece by her teacher, the artist An­toni Bren­garet i Framis. Pro­fes­sor and Di­rec­tor of the Groc Art and De­sign School in Barcelona.